Leaving behind a better world

I was doing a Sunday morning walk with CBC Radio and Michael Enright’s “The Sunday Edition” playing in my ears.
Michael (because I am on a first-name basis with my CBC people) offered up the recording of Justice Rosalie Abella’s recent address to the graduates from Yale Law School.
I was moved—and I think I came a little bit closer to finding the answers to the many questions that run incessantly around in my brain; one of those being “what’s it all about.”
Most of you will know who Rosalie Abella is but for a slight refresher course, she was the first Jewish woman to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada, having been appointed to such an honour in 2004 by then Prime Minister Paul Martin.
She also recently earned an honourary degree from Yale Law School—the first Canadian woman to be recognized so.
The important part of her life and journey, however, began much earlier than that when she was born in 1946 in a refugee camp in Germany after the Second World War. Her parents were born in Poland; her father becoming a lawyer and just beginning his career when Germany invaded Poland.
Jacob Silberman and his wife were sent to separate concentration camps where their two-year-old son would perish.
After the war, Silberman was appointed defence counsel for displaced persons in the Allied Zone of SW Germany, a job that restored Silberman and reaffirmed his belief that justice was possible—even after the cruelty he had witnessed and endured in a place totally devoid of humanity.
He moved his family to Canada in 1950.
The story of his courage and determination inspired his daughter to become a lawyer at a time when women practising law was a rarity. At the Yale graduation ceremony, the president said in his introduction of Abella that she is “an international inspiration because she joins a razor-sharp intellect to an unyielding support for human rights.”
And she has done exactly that—speaking for those who can’t; using her power to bring justice into focus.
Abella delivered a heartfelt, often emotional speech to the Yale graduates—a speech that one only could hope these future lawyers will call upon in their careers where “democracies and their laws represent the best possibilities.”
From suffering and great loss and endurance of unthinkable cruelties came this woman who would change the world for the better, no matter how small, no matter the measure. And her mantra has been the vision of a world where “all children, regardless of race, religion, or gender, can wear their identities with pride, in dignity, and in peace.”
We all play a part in achieving that goal: how we live our lives to be of use, how we nurture and teach our children, how we care for our neighbours, how we serve without witness or accolade, how we respect the soil upon which we stand and the animals with whom we share the planet, to ensure we leave behind a world for our children and grandchildren that is better than we found it.
wendistewart@live.ca